Asuka Langley Says Games Industry Pays More For Voiceover Work

Recently, we were able to catch up with Tiffany Grant, the dub voice actress behind characters such as Asuka Langley from Evangelion and Altena from Noir, at the SMASH convention in Australia.

Ms. Grant was kind enough to give us some of her time, to talk about about her career and her personal outlook on voiceover work for anime versus videogames. Two titles she was involved with on the game front were Deus Ex: Invisible War and Unlimited Saga. When asked if she would like to return to working in games, she explained that the industry pays more than anime.

“Yes, because it pays more,” we were told. “The city where I live, Houston, there’s not a lot of that work going on there, but yes, any of the voiceover for video games, I would love to do that again.”

Ms. Grant also touched upon the state of the anime industry in Japan, and the ever-present risk of talent moving over the videogame side entirely, due to the greater financial prospects.

“Even in the early 2000s, [anime] was still going quite strong, up until about 2004, before it started completely collapsing in on itself, and I just hope that there can still be some people hanging on and not everyone doesn’t totally move over into video games where they can actually make money,” she told us.

Eyepatch is from the recent Rebuild of Evangelion movies. The pointy chin is just Gainax.

http://thrust-the-sky.deviantart.com/ WildArms

with the (sick) ending of evangelion i though azuka was going to commit suicide and take shinji with her to death… or something like that. I dont know if i should see the evangelion 0.23123.23.12 or w/e, i’m scared…

Exkaiser

Rebuild of Evangelion appears to be following a different path, starting with the second movie.

http://thrust-the-sky.deviantart.com/ WildArms

Oh, interesting :O, at least now im slighty interesting, i just hope they leave out (or less frequent) those wtf Psychology/psychoanalytic episodes

http://soundcloud.com/tet-chan TetsuyaHikari

“i just hope they leave out (or less frequent) those wtf Psychology/psychoanalytic episodes”

Are you kidding? That’s what made them so great, lol. It’s nice to have some psychological aspects your anime too :3

holyPaladin

That makes Eva interesting (besides the girls of course :P

gatotsu911

Yeah, seriously. If you want Evangelion without any of the things that made it good, try some of the horrible spinoff manga or games.

http://www.siliconera.com Melinda

We had fun asking her about her opinions on Asuka, among other things. It was a laid back session where we just talked for about 30 minutes, give or take a bit.

Guest

pointy chins are pretty much the norm now in Anime

YoFace

I hate to bring this up here, but, didn’t she appear in the infamous “Girugamesh” video?

http://twitter.com/cocainexplosion Doctor_Rabbit

“I love sushi.”

Yeah, that was her. To be honest though, she had the best part. Nothing wrong with loving sushi.

But the people after her…

gatotsu911

I had no idea Tiffany Grant had ever even done voice work, but I’ve heard similar things regarding pay grades for game work vs. anime work from other voice actors. It’s probably worth noting that several of Grant’s contemporaries who are still doing voiceover work – such as Spike Spencer and Amanda Winn Lee, also from Evangelion – have moved to California and today work primarily or exclusively in games.

gatotsu911

Voice work for games, I mean. Yeah.

mikedo2007

Yeah a lot of our anime VAs like Steve Blum, Yuri Lowenthal, Crispin Freeman are also doing video game voiceover (and American animation). I’m glad to see anime VAs are doing more then just anime. I was shocked to find out that some of Funimation’s VA like Eric Vale, Colleen Clinkenbeard, and Lydia McCay has lend their voice for Borderlands. I would love to see some of our NA Animation VAs like Nolan North, Clancy Brown, Tom Kane, and other actors doing anime just for once.

But wow, Eric Vale and Colleen Clinkenbeard are in Borderlands? As major characters, or just extras? Oh well, I guess Borderlands isn’t exactly a story-oriented game so it doesn’t really matter, but those are two of my favorite VAs. It would definitely be in Funimation’s interest to do more video game work. I’m kind of surprised that even some Texas-based game studios, like Retro (which had extensive voice acting for the last Metroid Prime game) still turn to California for voiceover recordings when there are a ton of voice actors right in their backyard.

mikedo2007

Actually Nolan North has never done any anime dub-over. I check his profile and even ANN encylopedia and he’s never done a anime dub before (unless he did it under an aliases).Colleen Clinkenbeard voiced Lilith in Borderlands (I think she the character who help you from the beginning). For Eric Vale, I think he voice a minor character. FYI: Mad Moxxi in Borderlands is voiced by Brina Palencia.BTW, I always thought some anime like Blood +, Ghost in the Shell: SAC, and Kurokami could been done by using NA Animation VAs like I think Nolan North would’ve made a great Togusa, Ming-Na might have done a great Motoko Kusanagi after hearing her voicing several character similar to her. It would have been cool to hear Kevin Michael Richardson voicing Batou. For Kurokami, I always thought Tara Strong had a voice that fit Kuro. For Keita, I would’ve like Will Friedle to maybe voice him if they were using NA Animation VAs.

http://www.aksysgames.com Belisarius

Lilith is one of the people you can play as, actually.

http://www.siliconera.com Melinda

It proved to be an interesting conversation, although it sucked cause I was horribly delayed due to matters outside my control. We just happened to be around when she was in town.

We spent a good 30 minutes talking about various topics within gaming and anime, and some of it proved rather interesting. She’d probably shoot me for being a week late though, but pretty much getting very sick and having disasters hit you within 12 hours of the interview wasn’t much fun and took until very recently to recover from.

Exand

I don’t suppose there’s a full interview transcript? It would be interesting to hear her thoughts.

http://www.siliconera.com Melinda

There is, that’s correct. (Well, I hope so, I recorded about 30 minutes each with Tiffany Grant, Matt Greenfield and Yuko Miyamura. They were a lot of fun to talk with since I was more interested in making sure their time wasn’t boring stoic questions.)

However, due to technical issues, the results can’t be published at least yet. For one, there’s no digital version of the transcript, so work is being conducted very slowly.

It’s all a very long story though, which got compounded by getting sick a couple of hours afterwards (and I’m still in poor medical condition) and a few other things.

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